Meanwhile, back at the lab....
Hat tip to Arnold Kling for pointing out this interesting article about a promising innovation that may help address our "peaky" oil problem.
The article's headline:
Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol
Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide 'renewable petroleum'
Sound's great. Add this to a list of creative solutions that keep fighting their way to the forefront to deal with oil supply.
from the article:
“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil....
they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this “Oil 2.0” will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.
And it's green too!
The company's name is LS9 and is operating with $20 million in start up capital from private investors including Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Micro-Systems.
Granted, the idea is still not without its "bugs" to work out...no pun intended...but the idea could bear fruit in the near future:
“Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,” says [senior director Greg] Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.
Says Arnold Kling with some level of justified smugness:
The entrepreneurs are trying to solve our energy problems. What is government doing? Putting a tariff on Brazilian sugar cane, among other things.
---and doing a lot of inept and impotent talking and grand-standing I might add.
This all reminds of those Royal Bank of Scotland commericials. One involves hikers and one of them accidently steps in quicksand. The tour guide notices and then goes on and on about how he thinks they should form a steering committee and do a risk analysis or some other long winding deliberation. While he's going on and on talking to an entralled audience of hikers engrossed in the problem-solving process monologue, one lone hiker throws a rope to the sinking hiker and pulls him out. Another ad along the same lines involves a cable car high off the ground that suddenly stops. Same shtick. Meanwhile, amidst all the chatter, one of the passengers simply hits the reset button and the car starts moving.
The message is clear, less talk, more action. Sadly, I could not find links to the videos.
Good ads.
But I think they convey the image quite well about how are socio-economic challenges involving energy are being handled and will be solved. While politicians in the foreground talk and fill the air waves to a captive audience with empty chatter and stumping, innovators are quietly in the background looking for solutions by building on what we know today to push the limits of what we could know tomorrow. Funny, isn't that how it always works, anyway? ;)
No doubt some president or congressman will be their to cut a ribbon and try and draw the kudos back onto themselves when one of these creative ideas gets put into action and most will saldy remember the president during whose term it happened and the real heroes will be forgotten and made to be some greedy business man at some point when political dogma and machinations butt heads with these entrepreneurs over the business side of things.
Pardon my cycinism. I expect such nonsense...but I'll gladly deal with it as long as progress from the invisble entrepreneurs comes with it.
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References -
That's true. The scientists and the engineers will probably be forgotten while the public remembers the investors and CEOs.
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). . .because history proves that inventors of world-transforming technologies tend to be uttely forgotten, while history books shower capitalists with praise. In fact, this guy wrote those history books.
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| parent )But Brazilian ethanol might be even more carbon-producing than domestic ethanol. It takes less energy to produce, since there's more sugar in cane than in corn, but on the other hand, Brazilian rain forests have to be cleared in order to grow sugar cane. Those rain forests constitute a large part of the world carbon-converting capacity.
--More Wagster!
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)Grow in a different part of Brazil than cleared rainforest.
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| parent )http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cana-de-a%C3%A7%C3%BAcar#Produ.C3.A7.C3.A3o...
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| parent ). . .so the Democrats will find some way to obstruct it. Look for M. Night Shyamalan to be called as an expert witness in the hearings called for that purpose.
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)Our bold conservatives, always fighting the Real Enemy -- their fellow Americans.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )I'm surprised you missed that point-scoring opp.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )...of a Republican in theory fighting in favor of allowing scientific research to improve lives.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )They're everywhere, aren't they - almost like a Biblical plague. I hope we have enough cops on our side to chase away all of the victimized come election Day - god forbid it should be a fair one for once.
PS Don't let anyone tell you it's the second Tuesday in November this time around - everyone knows Election Day is the first Thursday.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )...is likely to result in the premature deaths of more than one family member, I would like to politely invite you to Ch*n*y off.
I further revel in the irony of a Republican invoking the concept of a "fair" election; I thought elections just sort of picked somebody based on who had more SCOTUS justices at the time and the other side had to "get over it."
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )....from doing what it would please me to do, you are the enemy, at some level. That holds from nutty Islamists telling me what to believe to nutty communitarians telling me who to care about. You doubtless have your own examples. In any case, conflict always boils down to your rights vs. my rights. Wherever practicable, I choose mine. The law and/or public opinion hold no moral force or component in and of themselves, only that which I give them by agreeing or disagreeing with them.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )Which is why any sane polity would eject you out of self-preservation -- if you actually lived as extremely as you advocate.
Since I doubt you hold any neighbor of yours who has an item you covet but refuses to allow you to enter his premises and take it at your whim as your enemy, I'd prefer to return this conversation to the level of the sane. And if you don't immediately allow me to, logically . . .
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )And you know it.
If we can get bugs to make oil from CO2, why would anyone have a problem with that? It's carbon neutral and does not require tearing up the landscape.
We have a problem with destroying pristine habitat that's been around for thousands of years, for the sake of a few months worth of SUV food. We have a problem with losing something valuable in exchange for essentially nothing.
You can't tell the difference?
--Of course not!
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| parent )Assuming that this is actually real, there will be strong objections to this and they will virtually all come from Democrats. Watch.
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| parent )It's the Class Struggle that's the underlying tension in all this...
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| parent )So Republicans would be sure to oppose it too. A loser all-around.
--More Wagster!
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| parent )...use of the term. The environment has no particular value, good or ill, with us (that is, humans) as the context. It is here for no particular reason (nor are we), but derives all value from human use of it. That holds whether the use is the pumping and burning of hydrocarbons or the breathing of sweet, large-particulate-less air. It has no value beyond us, either way, so "rape" doesn't seem like the right term.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )I agree that the Earth has no value without human (or other advanced species) giving context. A meteor could wipe the place out at any time. The biosphere has its eons numbered.
That said, you are simply ignoring future generations. Permanent damage to the environment is essentially theft from future generations. Even if we take the position that humanity "owns" the Earth (and it is a debatable position on various grounds), it still does not follow that present humans own the Earth. It would be more accurate to consider us temporary stewards.
Permanent damage is when we destroy species and habitat that cannot be recovered. The destruction of biodiversity on the verge of the age of genetic engineering is akin to burning down the Library of Congress right at about the time you are learning to read. It's not merely criminal, it's incredibly stupid.
Likewise for contaminating the planet with chemicals that degrade on a scale of thousands of years, usually for no reason better than laziness or shaving a penny or two from production costs.
Our current way of doing things is a form of fraud.
--Of course not!
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| parent )...."other advanced species" for the moment. I'm pretty clearly in the group H. Sapiens Sapiens, as are my kids, so we can restrict ourselves to the "facts on the ground", as the Israelis have been known to put it.
"That said, you are simply ignoring future generations. Permanent damage to the environment is essentially theft from future generations."
You make two points here; one is, IMO, trivial, and the other is incorrect.
First, let's look at the incorrect side. "Theft" is whatever the legal monopoly on force says it is. If I have a legal right to burn down my woods to plant sugarcane, it is not theft. Likewise, if the government has a legal right to collect money from me, it is not government theft.
Now let's look at trivial. All current consumption, beyond the bare minimum required to produce another generation, is taking away from future generations. That applies equally to using up hydrocarbons, investing in depreciating assets (and the resources required for them) to tap renewables or your having a beer this afternoon instead of putting the 5 bucks in a bank account for your kids. The mere fact that you are using anything means you are taking away some of it from future users. True, this is mitigated (and often overwhelmed, in this modern era) by returns to investment. But we can presume, for the sake of argument, that all resources are eventually, at some level, finite. It is not at all clear that all usage should then be confined to some unspecified future generation(s). What it means is that you get into a discussion about growth rates, returns, what the estimates are for how much of X we really have (and how much more X can be found at a higher price) and the rate at which we discount the future.
Also, you're engaging in hyperbole. Driving Muddy Mudskipper extinct is not "akin to burning down the Library of Congress right at about the time you are learning to read." I've got a hella big personal library, but I still felt it was worthwhile when I moved to get rid of my old Chilton's manual for the Dodge Charger I drove in college. And not all books are created equal, nor do they all remain stable in value.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )I mean rilly.
Yer 'humans only' view is most naturally wedded w. a 'Man in God's image' Judeo-Christian perspective... and maybe ultimately derived from being surrounded by it?
For those of us who think we're made outta the same stuff as the rest the environment, what's the prob w. thinking there's some non-derivative value in oceans, rainforests, and the Agobi desert?
'Humans are the only intrinsic good' ain't no axiom in my Theory O Value.
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| parent )I'm me, therefore all my values touch on me as the one certain fixed point in a universe of otherwise filtered external data. I also have to extend that existential narcissism to the rest of you, because you all seem to insist on it and you're capable of motivation and action in the service of that motivation. The rest of it appears to fall under the rubric "resources". That we might have ended up here through the interaction of self-replicating systems and scarce resources rather than an old dude in the sky seems beside the point; here we are.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )by the anthropocentric metaphor: the essential point is overusing resources and/or passing on unrecovered costs amounts to stealing common resources from *other* people. By your rationale we could decide to use up all the terrestrial oxygen in our own lifetimes, seeing as we won't be needing it after we're dead.
A secondary point would be that biodiversity is a productive good in itself, much as cultural diversity is a good in itself: both produce a greater rate of adaptations to circumstances and hence increase options.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )I'm quite willing to deny you resources that I wouldn't or won't deny to my children, say, my estate. You're taking the trivial point that few of us discount the future 5 years out at 100% to mean that we don't discount it at all, or that we're in some way wedded to an even distribution of that future. Neither of those are true.
Your secondary point is more valid, IMHO, but it still falls prey to the fallacy of the excluded middle. Diversity has some benefits, monoculture others. It is not at all clear to me that you have an analytic answer for the "correct" balance.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )we need the biosphere, not the other way around. Severe enough damage to it could threaten our existence - how would that affect your human based valuation? It also has immense unknown value at this time, so damaging it affects our long term prosperity, even using your metric.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Then again, stepping outside and being hit by a bus or a tornado would affect my own valuations (by far the most important) very badly, too. Risk associated with an activity =/= you don't accept the risk in order to take the gain of the activity. And we haven't even touched on proper discounting; I'd wager that most of you discount the future pretty heavily (not to say hyperbolically) in practice, rhetoric aside. Same for MA's objection above.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )the flip answer is that I'm me and you're you, so according to your philosophy I don't care what you think - but that doesn't get us very far. There's no way to do proper discounting of the value of lifeforms when you don't even know the value of what you're destroying. As to your final point, you can always point to people and say they're hypocritical and not doing enough, but that doesn't mean it's not a worthy goal to aim for.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )You admit yourself that you can't put a value on said organisms, so how can you possibly know whether the goal of preserving them (or stuff for them) is worthy or not? I say I'm discounting them just fine, Hank. Now if you want to get serious about it, try putting a value on it.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )between assuming things are valueless (or close to it) and not knowing how valuable they may turn out to be.
As I said before, we need the biosphere more than it needs us. You may be interested to know that we can't replicate it at this point - the only time they tried, at Biosphere 1, the system was out of balance and the oxygen levels dropped throughout the experiment. It may well be that some "worthless" organisms are needed to keep things in balance.
The fact is, we mess with the ecosystem at our peril, especially at large scales. Considering the possible results, I would think the conservative point of view would be to disrupt it minimally until we get a better handle on the science involved. It is not something that when broken could easily be fixed - in fact, given our current state of knowledge it may be impossible to fix. Put all that at risk for some temporary benefits like jobs or money? Shortsightedness defined.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )A futile observation, I know--but at least those with immunity should choose to avoid flaunting it in the comment headers.
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| parent )But then who knows what crafty modifications he's made to the Cray Y-MP that runs this site. After all, he's a hank of all trades, a polyglot polymath, a pixelated renaissance kind of mensch - you should see how he souped up my TV reception over the internet, not to mention that thanks to him my car now gets 94 MPG while I'm driving it home to work, which is uphill both ways.
I don't remember the BD remark you mention, but I think calling someone "hopeless" is pretty tame in context, didn't seem to bother Bernard, and was used rhetorically here. Calling BG "homeless", OTOH . . .
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )the first line afterwards explains it. And where did you get the idea that I have some sort of immunity? I do what the mods tell me to do just like everyone else.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Suspending you would be like an alcoholic suspending his liver--it would be self-defeating and unpleasant for the alcoholic and probably a vacation for the liver. We all appreciate what you do for us here--even me when I'm snarling at you. But I saw Bird Dog get a warning yesterday for a milder comment than that comment header, even if you clarified it later. I'd like to see consistency in enforcement, even if the "penalty" in this case is a cleared throat from a moderator rather than a hinted at suspension.
Here endeth the sermon. :-)
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| parent )I've passed on a copy of the keys to corky, and MA retains possession also. The site pretty much runs itself, and aside from some problems with the hosting company you guys would be fine if I was suspended for a week (or more). The only time I think I really crossed the line I took a couple days off, because I think it's a bad sign if I let something here bug me that much (although I still think the comment I responded to was pretty low).
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )And no, it's not because Hank always does what he tells me to tell him to do. It just seemed like a playful jibe and not any kind of personal attack, the gist of which was that Bernard's philosophy is already inherently "personal" and hence impossible to discuss in a non-personal way.
And yes, of course, it would be difficult to suspend Hank...the results might be something like what you see here, starting around 5:05 (oddly enough youtube picked the exact moment as its preview frame):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=K31BGvIn57k
But he has no immunity. If Hank breaks the rules, we have other ways of bringing the rebel scum back into line. Like...we could replace his sig line with something really humiliating. A scarlet letter!
Question is, what would the letter be...?
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent );)
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| parent ). . .but I'm a piker compared to James Lileks--who does a nice job here in picking to pieces the memes that Madame Botox is pushing. My favorite part is when he does the math and notices that--in the midst of all the shrieking about "obscene" oil company profits--in California the state and federal governments make more in taxes off a gallon of gas than even the amount loosely described as "profit" (which actually includes a lot of things that *aren't* profit, as far as real world logic is concerned).
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| parent )just crude oil.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )